By Elizabeth King Humphrey, Scientific American MIND Stumped by a crossword puzzle? Try taking a break to watch a funny TV show. Recent research shows that people in a lighthearted mood more often have eureka moments of sudden inspiration. Karuna Subramaniam, then at Northwestern University, and her...

From the New York Times A summary: Scientists have found indications that your ability to jump to intuitive answers — what they term the “Aha!” moment — may be affected by your mood. After watching a humorous video, brain imaging and test results of subjects suggested that a positive mood prepares the...

By Charles Q. Choi "The dozen students and scientists spread over an area called Furnace Creek looked like cyborgs in floppy hats scrabbling over the boulders. Before hammering chips off rocks, they inspected them with magnifying lenses held up next to eyeglasses sporting miniature cameras and infrared...

This article elaborates the process of decision making in organizational environments characterized by disciplined improvisation. Building on an ethnography of forecasting operations at the National Weather Service, it introduces “collage” as a mediating concept between information bricolage and the...

After a sketch of the optimism and high aspirations of History and Philosophy of Science when I first joined the field in the mid 1960s, I go on to describe the disastrous impact of "the strong programme" and social constructivism in history and sociology of science. Despite Alan Sokal's...

Knowing and Not Knowing – What is Possible? ‘Human thinking can only imagine reality, just as a portrait represents a person. And as a portrait is not “the person” it represents, likewise any theory is not “the reality” it describes. We then must humbly recognize that our minds’ coherence and logic do...

Actuality and Reality in the Buddha's Teachings I was surfing the net and came across an image of two sign posts, each pointing in an opposite direction; one direction pointed to Reality and the other, Truth. This demarcation was surprising because often Truth, or Actuality, and Reality are understood...

My new book incorporates the writings of contemporary Buddhist scholar, psychologists, cognitive scientists and physicists to provide a fascinating and authoritative framework for the interpretation of the Buddha's teachings. In this revised and expanded edition, the Eightfold Path and the practice...

“ Everything should be as simple as it can be but not simpler!” Albert Einstein This short essay takes serious the advice of Albert Einstein and will satisfactorily clarify the title in a couple of paragraphs. One of the topics that I discussed in my book, The Teachings of the Buddha: Seeing Without...

Book Description: Hardcover release date 22 April 2013. It is virtuous to be wise and wise to be virtuous. The Language of Human Character is a reference book, textbook and workbook in one. It contains "The Human Character Dictionary," a definitive record of the language of human character...

We all live in the same world and we all have our trust, expectations, presumptions, predictions, beliefs and intentions. They might even be wrapped up in a theory or a model that we can try and value, intuit and realize or know and sense, in our own mind or interactively. Constructive recollection is...

If Social Constructionism does not prefer monistic Postmodernism over dualistic Modernism, it should include, next to living expressions and spontaneous gestures, criticism into its process model, occurring as independent confirmation and implying coordinated reflection between the knowing organism and...